Morning Brief: Media industry records first revenue gains since 2007; Apple begins selling the iPhone 4 unlocked; Media picks debate winners, why bother watching?

Another study, this one from Pricewaterhouse Cooper, shows that last year overall media industry revenue grew 3.1 percent, the first growth in media revenue since 2007. The study, reported by Bloomberg last night, also predicted a similar level of gain, 3.5 percent, for this year.

Not surprisingly, digital products recorded the lion's share of the growth.

AdWeek explored the same report and says that the good revenue news is tempered by bad news for the magazine business saying that "underlying weakness in circulation will prevent publishers from growing print advertising at more than a modest pace."

Yesterday Kantar Media reported that the industry recorded a 4.4 percent increase in advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year. It also said, however, that the newspaper industry continues to lag behind, down 2.1 percent from a year ago.

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Apple began offering its iPhone 4 for sale on its website in an unlocked state. Because the price of the phone is not subsidized by a carrier, the prices start at $649. Also, the phones will only work on GSM cellular networks, so Verizon customers are out of luck, though rumors are that the next generation of iPhone may be a 'world phone'.

Apple has been selling unlocked iPhones overseas for a while, but this is a first for the US market. But because the price is so high, it is unlikely that many will leap at the chance at buying an unlocked phone.

But, if you are a regular traveller to Europe, this may definitely be the way to go.

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I will admit, I did not watch last night's GOP debate on CNN. Bachmann, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Cain, Santorum, Paul, Romney – isn't this the normal Fox News line-up?

But it hardly matters if you watched, the media will tell you who "won" and who "lost". Your own understanding of the facts and your positions really are irrelevant to the media, rather than report, they now see their job as to evaluate.

The Christian Science Monitor says Romney and Bachmann did well, while USA Today said the "GOP debate served up Muslim fears and pizza picks" – must have been a wonderful night.

As for ratings, well no one seems to be reporting those. But seeing as the debate was on CNN, not Fox News, it is likely that the normal audience for watching this crew would have bene confused – isn't CNN part of the evil empire?

Reengineering the enterprise to death: consolidating production is a good way to downsize revenue potential

A great way to drive yourself out of business is to downsize, as anyone who has seen the devastation of downsizing on the newspaper or B2B magazine business will tell you. For publishing executives who pursue such policies, the idea is that the cost savings created in one place will be made up with investments in another. Of course, everyone that is utter BS, even the executives themselves if they could stand to be honest for a minute. The real reason for downsizing is "I didn't know what else to do".

But while journalists decry the layoffs in the newsroom few talk about what happens when production under goes the knife. In the early nineties I left McGraw-Hill mainly because of the "reengineering" that took place under a new division president. The idea was to consolidate production at the division's dozen or so regional publications. I knew then, and know today, that the loss of locally based production ended any hopes of creating new locally run products.

In 1993, looking at the production resources we enjoyed in San Francisco, I launched a new magazine. No new staff was hired simply because we had the resources in place to create a new product. At the same time we launched custom publishing ventures such as producing and selling membership directories for regional trade associations. Although we no doubt had to bring on a few part timers to assist, generally we could do the work in house. The result was new revenue, new profitable products and real growth.

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Reengineering the Corporation, a book that was required reading
in many publishing companies in the early '90's, and used
too often as an excuse to mindlessly cut staff sizes.

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But management, dealing with the effects of the economic slowdown that followed the first Gulf War, wanted to "reengineer" the division. That was a hip new way of saying folks would be losing their jobs. Ultimately those positions were the source of some cost savings, but the custom publishing business was destroyed, and the monthly magazine soon went away, as well. One of the last things I did as publisher with McGraw-Hill was to paginate a huge membership directory myself on an Apple Performa 630, if you remember those. I did the work and handed it off to the production hub, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Two years ago Gannett announced that it would create page production hubs in Asbury Park, Des Moines, Nashville, Phoenix and Louisville. Each of these hubs would produce pages for other newspapers in their regions, and would result, of course, in positions being eliminated on the local level. The plan has yet to be fully implemented, but staffers know their will be layoffs to come.

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One of my biggest complaints with the US newspaper business is its lack of new product development – newspapers are so geared to producing the daily product that it rarely is able to create innovative new products that will stop the flow of ad revenue from leaving the industry.

But downsizing production pretty much kills off the idea of growth. Sadly, many publishing executives have abandoned the very idea of growth. It is as if they have never had experience with the concept. For too many, growth is having one product produce five percent more revenue year over year, when real growth may require a bit more work than that – like launching a new product, for instance.

But, of course, "reengineering" is not limited to editorial and production as sales staffers will tell you. But then it is pretty easy to see the devastating effects shrinking sales staffs have had in the B2B magazine business as the slew of 28 page magazine issues can attest.

Miami Herald runs Macy's ad celebrating championship that never happened; most accounts miss one big fact

This story about the Miami Herald running an ad from Macy's that celebrates an NBA title has been picked up by a number of sources.

But what the New Times failed to mention – and, by the way, the photo at left is courtesy of the paper – and what other sources failed to mention is that even if the Miami Heat had won yesterday the ad would still have been a mistake.

The ad from the department store proclaims "Congratulations MIAMI!" and is surrounded by a story that tells that the NBA championship had, in fact, been won by the Dallas Mavericks.

But going into last night's game, the Mavericks were leading the Heat three games to two. Had the Heat won last night it would have evened the series three games a piece. In other words, the production department at the Miami Herald blew it big time – that ad wasn't scheduled to run until later in the week, or never, depending on events.

As it turns out, the Heat went down, the Mavericks are champions, and Macy's is about to get a "make good".

One size fits all approaches to app development generally results in an ill-fitting media app of little appeal

However much I may dislike replica editions, or mobile apps that are simply RSS readers, the reality is that many media apps get launched that simply end up being ignored, and are easily replaced with better apps down the line. Sometimes launching an app that sinks like a stone is good for everyone involved.

The one question rarely asked by publishers about to launch new apps is what will be new about the app itself, what new content, or new service will it provide readers. The reason for this is that by being completely print centric, the goal of the mobile app ends up being simply to replicate the print product on a new platform.

One barrier holding back many new media apps is that the services and capabilities being offered the publisher by their own development teams, or outside vendors, is limited. I've looked at many mobile app services and generally see the same ol' widgets and RSS reader features. Many vendors come up with a list of options for their customers on the day they open up shop and they sell the heck out of their services, never bothering to update their offerings after they have started. One very good mobile app developer, one I've spoken to many times, hasn't even updated their own website in a year and half because they haven't added any new services in so long.

The mobile apps that I have enjoyed using the most over the past year have been apps that have presented a very different set of content options that what the publisher currently offers online or in their original branded app. The NYT app for iPhone, for instance, has an incredibly deep level of content, yet nothing that the paper's website can't offer me, just in a more readable format for my phone. It's The Scoop app, however, is certainly more fun and interesting in concept, though the paper doesn't seem very committed to expanding and improving it at this point.

Likewise, the Boston Herald Baseball 2011 app has proven quite useful, and now that the Red Sox are surging, probably is getting quite a bit of use from New England baseball fans. Meanwhile, the paper's main news app is a vendor created app that would have been wonderful in 2008, but looks dated now, and which sports a look that is consistent between apps developed by the same company, but does not give the Herald a consistent look with their own properties. Whose app is this anyways? The publishers or the developers?

This lack of imagination on the part of publishers is one reason that some of the most interesting work is being done by independent publishers – those are developing for the smartphone or tablet exclusively. Photography apps, historical apps, and book apps are providing traditional print publishers with plenty of new ideas that old media, because of the wealth of content at its disposal, could build on with their own offerings.

HP's Touchpad: will the launch of a WebOS tablet grow the market, or simply drive more developers to iOS?

It might sound counterintuitive, but it is possible that as more tablets are released, and more mobile OS platforms introduced, that developers will become even more committed to the iOS platform as a sort of base from which to begin app development.

There is no doubt in my mind that HP's new tablet, the Touchpad, to be launched into the US market on July 1, has a more than decent chance to be successful. HP is a tech giant, of course, that reaches into a wide and deep retail environment. No doubt you will see Touchpads wherever you go when shopping. Whether you will see consumers guys them is another question, but I'm not pessimistic.

But as HP's tablet gains traction the question becomes will developers create for the platform. I think they will. But the real question is will developers consider the platform as core to their work as iOS. This is questionable.

I have always assumed that once Android tablets became available that developers would flock to Android simply because, like smartphones, Android tablets would quickly overwhelm the iPad. I even thought it possible that by the summer we might see a flip in the habits of developers – instead of developing for iOS first, then porting to Android, the opposite would occur simply because of the market shift.

Well, there has been no market shift simply because while Android is outselling the iPhone, it is not outselling the iPad. Part of the blame for this goes to the manufacturers who over promised and under delivered: launching tablets that run on versions of Android not specifically geared towards tablets, or else, the case of Motorola, launching a tablet that is half-baked, without the apps necessary to lure buyers in droves.

One would think that HP, being a mega-seller of hardware, would be in a better position to succeed. The videos below, released on the company's YouTube channel, are certainly impressive (to a certain degree), and they are definitely better than those special effects laden commercials from Motorola that actually don't show the consumer anything. But while the word "magic" is used a few times, what we really are getting here is the same silly attempt to overwhelm potential buyers with features. (Rule #1, you sell benefits, not features.)

July 1 is launch day and if HP understands what buyers what they will make sure important apps ready to go for buyers. If they don't, they will have another nice piece of electronics that will join the other tablets that sit at Best Buy and other outlets while consumers play with iPads.

In the meantime, you can be sure that if sales are even modest that digital publishing solution providers will be able to help publishers develop for the platform, just as they have Android. But if the WWDC survey is any indication, WebOS is not a high priority for native app developers – at least for right now.

Morning Brief: NYT editorializes about iPad book app; advertising grows in Q1 except for newspapers, inserts

In what may be a first, the New York Times has published an editorial about an app – in this case, The Waste Land, a book app for the iPad of poet T.S. Elliot's major work.

"It’s always hard to say what a dead poet would have liked," the Times editorial begins, "especially a poet as particular, not to say critically sniffy, in his likes and dislikes as T. S. Eliot. But the guarantee of electronic posterity should be hard for even him to resist."

First published by Faber & Faber in 1922, it is safe to say that this is the first time the work has gotten the iPad app treatment. Developed and sold by Touch Press, of London, England, the app costs $13.99, and joins a couple other well received book apps: Solar System for iPad and Gems and Jewels, both also $13.99 to download.

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Finally a bit of good news on the advertising front: Kantar Media reported this morning that ad spending was up in the first quarter by a healthy 4.4 percent.

“More than two-thirds of advertisers are increasing budgets compared with a year ago,” said Jon Swallen, senior vice president for research at the Kantar Media Intelligence, the NYT reported.

The bad news, however, is that newspapers continue to perform badly, down 2.1 percent from a year ago. Free-standing inserts were also down, sharply, in fact, 17.5 percent.

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Media companies can not get enough of Sarah Palin, and the addiction to covering the less-than-one term Alaskan governor continues with the release of 25,000 emails from the short time she was in office.

But the public most likely will be disinterested as the emails apparently are as insightful and informative as a hour long lecture by Palin on the American History. Look for this story to go away fairly fast.